


Sluit me maar op!

by Insecuriosity



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Internal Conflict, Mental Instability, Multiple Personalities, Therapy, ask to tag, gewetenswroeging, siebren argues with his therapist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23286895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insecuriosity/pseuds/Insecuriosity
Summary: Siebren was a dangerous and unhinged individual, a ticking time bomb that was liable to go off at any second. He knew that about himself. Why is it so hard for everyone else to understand that they need to lock him away, and throw away the key?!
Relationships: None
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	Sluit me maar op!

“Why do you think you need to be restrained Siebren?”

Siebren did not answer right away. The music made it harder to process speech, even on a good day like this one, and it was important that he chose the right words. He had to make sure that they understood. “Because I am a danger to the people around me,” he replied as evenly as his voice would let him. 

His therapist was a middle-aged, serious looking man. The wall behind him had five different doctorates, and Siebren felt like he should have been able to put a name to the man’s face but he was drawing a blank. 

“Am I in danger, being around you right now?” his therapist asked. He had a thoughtful expression on his face that slid into a soft concern – as if he was worried for Siebren, instead of himself. 

“Yes, you are.” Siebren could feel gravity all around him, like a blanket that could become a whirling torrent at the slightest twitch. Any uncontrolled movement, even just a stray thought, could send the man crashing against the wall at terminal velocity.

“How so?”

It was an infuriating question. Siebren knew that the man meant well, but just by asking something so stupid he showed how little he understood. “I have told you before. I am powerful, and mentally unstable. There will be a moment where I’ll slip up! _Da’s gegarandeerd_!” 

“We’ve talked about this before. Do you remember what I said?” 

Siebren tried to recall the conversation. His focus almost slipped, and he curled into a tight ball, fingers and bare toes digging into the fabric of the chair he was sitting in. He couldn’t think of that, not right now. Not unless he wanted to lose his control. His therapist said nothing.

“… No. No, I don’t remember.” Siebren couldn’t stop from grinding his teeth, the noise of it only barely rising above the discordant tones in the music. 

If the therapist was bothered by his lack of memory, he didn’t show it. “Over the years, I’ve worked with many people. Generally speaking, all of them could have hurt me anytime they wished. Some of them had anger issues or poor impulse control, and they came to me for help in finding different ways to diffuse their anger.”

Siebren had to strain to hear him. The music was loud – so _loud_! 

“All of them could have hurt me, but ultimately the only thing that mattered was whether they _wanted_ to hurt me,” the therapist continued. His eyes were dark like the night sky, speckled with stars. “Even the most kindly and tame person has the capacity to hurt others. I could walk through a street, and pass throngs of people that could put me in the hospital should they so wish. Tell me Siebren, do you want to hurt me?”

Siebren’s mind screamed _‘no’_ loud enough to drown out even the music, and a moment later he realised he hadn’t kept it to mental screaming alone. He’d jumped out of his chair, and was looming over the desk – panting madly. His therapist did not look frightened or offended. He stood up, and carefully reached for Siebren’s hand.

Siebren flinched back before he could touch, and scuttled back into his chair. “… No no. I-... Hurting you is the opposite of what I want to do.” 

“So, you do not want to hurt me, but you think you will do so regardless. Then, am I correct in saying that you don’t trust your control over your powers?”

Siebren could have cried from relief. He nodded. “Yes. Yes!”

“Why don’t you trust your powers?”

Siebren opened his mouth to answer. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but the music overpowered them. The song – it was still beautiful, even after hearing it so many times, but he could feel the menace behind it. The urge to dance to the melody, even while knowing what it would do.  
He had as much control as his powers allowed him. The same way that a human could only be as precise as their muscle tension let them be. At any moment, any time, he could lose that illusion of choice and follow the music into annihilation and destruction. Blood and bone floating weightlessly. Carefully crafted structures crumpled and destroyed. 

“Siebren?”

Siebren jolted. The papers on the therapist’s deck rustled as gravity fluctuated briefly. Oh, yes. He needed to answer. “I can’t be trusted,” he said haltingly. It was difficult to put his thoughts together through the blaring music. “I am unreliable.”

“Is it really _you_ that is unreliable?” 

A quick flash of irritation went through Siebren, and he found himself thinking ‘yes, _yes_ , we’ve been over this before.’ He already knew what his therapist wanted him to say _: ‘You are not your power’._ He was right, in a way. Siebren was not his power. Siebren was a gnat crawling over the control panel of the universe. It was only a matter of time before it would go wrong.  
He opened his mouth, and closed it again just as quickly. He did not remember any previous sessions, but he knew with a hundred percent certainty that his gnat-analogy would get him nowhere. The therapist would latch onto it, thinking that it was something as inane as low self-esteem rather than the truth. Siebren could not let him. He had a mission.

“That is not important right now,” Siebren said. “I am _dangerous_ I am un-… my powers are unreliable! I should- I _need_ to be in chains, or I will inevitably hurt those around me!” 

“You say your powers are unreliable, but I’ve never seen you do something you didn’t mean to,” his therapist said. “Last session, I asked you if you could let me float for a little while, and you did. Do you remember? I thought that went very well. Was I missing something?”

Siebren shifted deeper into his chair, and his powers pressed him down further into the cushions. The flowers on his therapists’ desk bent as gravity pulled harder at their stems. “I used my powers on you?” He couldn’t remember doing so, and the sick feeling of menace became louder in his ears. “You should not have asked me to do that, I should not have done that, I could have killed you!”   
He could almost see it. The way organ and blood clustered and writhed when subjected to intense gravity. The sudden explosion of scent when he released his grip, as all those volatile molecules dispersed into the atmosphere. The specific wet noise of fresh meatslop hitting dirt.

The therapist – _Godverdomme_ what was his name – frowned. “You seem to talk about it like you weren’t there. Do you remember our last session?”

Siebren tried to remember. He had seen his therapist before. He knew for a fact that he always drank the same thing when he was here, the bitter taste of burnt green tea. The office was new – there wasn’t yet a kettle that could heat the water to the right temperature. Seventy degrees Celsius.  
He tried to dig deeper. Last session. Last session. The music grew louder, and his left ear popped. He curled up tighter in his chair and gave up. “I almost killed you, and you don’t even realise. You let me keep my powers, and I almost killed you! _Mijn God alsjeblieft_ , I need to be restrained before I actually _do_ it.”

It was a truth that Siebren knew to the bottom of his heart, even if he couldn’t remember exactly how he could be so sure. 

The therapist nodded. He wasn’t frowning, but Siebren could almost see his thoughts whirling and flying before he settled on his words. “These worries really weigh on you, don’t they?”

Siebren nodded. There was a burn starting in his eyes, but he refused to let the tears come out over something so inconsequential. He should be better than that. “So much more than you think. I can’t trust myself. I can’t keep myself under control. I will snap at some point and I … I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt someone,” _again_ , his mind whispered through the music.

His therapist took a long time to think again. “You have been living on Watchpoint Gibraltar for around a year now. You haven’t hurt a single person in that time. Not even the smallest accident with your powers. There’s only been the occasional broken teacup or dropped binder, and I can guarantee you that you are nowhere close to breaker Tracer’s record of broken kitchenware.”

“Gibraltar?” Siebren echoed. He didn’t remember any such place, or where he lived at all for that matter. 

“You’ve been practising with Zenyatta and Genji on how to exercise control and confidence. Look.” His therapist slid a photo-slab across his desk for Siebren to see. He recognised himself, standing between people whose faces and bodies tickled at his mind. He was smiling and looked older than he expected. The therapist slid a finger over the slab and changed the picture. “This is a photo from a couple of days ago – there was a barbeque. You helped to grill the sausages so they got a perfect even browning.” 

It was familiar, but even as something of a memory was starting to trickle back, he could feel his anxiety rising. A flick of his hand, and the photo-slab shot off the desk, clattering onto the floor. “No! You’re trying to distract me – I can’t get distracted, I need to be restrained! I need you to put me in isolation – in a cell. I can’t leave until you’ve promised to lock me up, for _real_ this time!”  
He had had this conversation before, he just couldn’t remember how many times. How many times had he succeeded, only for them to go back on their word and let him back out again? Had there been previous conversations, or was this just another twist in his mind – another way that the universe played with the limits of the human brain?

“I am not trying to distract you Siebren. You’ve been working very hard to increase your control and to feel more secure in your powers. I want to remind you of how far you’ve come since you joined Overwatch.”

Overwatch? A disbanded mercenary agency that worked for the government? Siebren’s head spun. What year was it – how could there be an Overwatch when he had grey hair and age-spots on his wrinkles?   
“No. No, it doesn’t matter what I’ve been practising-! I-! You need to make sure that I get restrained, or I’ll kill you. I won’t – I won’t have a choice! I’ll kill everyone here, and I won’t feel a thing – I’ll do it, it’s only a matter of time!”

“You won’t, Siebren.”

“How do you know?! How would you know that I wouldn’t?!” Siebren roared, and his power flared to life. “I’ve done it before! And it. Was. _Easy_. Why wouldn’t I just do it again?!”

“Because you are having one of your bad days. And yet, I’m still here. Unharmed.” 

Siebren stopped. His therapist – John Baker, his therapist’s name was _John Baker_ – was floating a fair distance above his desk chair, and Siebren could feel his power around him like an extension of his own body.   
John reached out with a hand, and Sigma automatically put his left hand in the man’s grip. It was comfortable, and familiar. He had done it dozens of times before. He could remember snippets of that first time, and how hard he had flinched at the unexpected touch. At that point, he hadn’t been touched for what felt like months. He had been holding back tears – lost in a maelstrom of memories – and John had managed to pull him out just by putting a hand on top of his clenched fists. 

“Oh. Yes,” Sigma murmured. He squeezed Johns hand, and let gravity escort them back into their seats. “I remember. _Godverdomme_ … How could I let this happen again! I am sorry, John- …”

John smiled at him. “There’s no need for apologies, Siebren. Nobody has the power to decide when they have their bad brain-days.”

Sigma glared at his fists as he slowly clenched and unclenched them. “I should! It’s-…! It’s been a year since I’ve gotten away from Talon – why can’t I just leave it behind and go back to who I used to be!”

“You’ve come a long way, Siebren,” John said kindly. “You’ve been through a set of incredibly traumatic experiences, including a Talon brainwashing, and after only a year you are here. Doing independent research in your own lab. Writing papers on black holes. Medidating. All these things that you thought you would never be able to do again.”

Sigma unclenched his fists, and took a deep breath. “ _Ja… Ja_. You’re right.”

“Each one of these episodes has lasted shorter than the previous one. You’ve been able to break free quicker and quicker – we haven’t had to open the old confinement room in six months!” John smiled and leaned over his desk to put a hand on Siebren’s hand. “I’m very proud of you Siebren.”

Sigma blinked slowly, and smiled back. “When you put it like that… I really have, haven’t I? Hah. Maybe next year around this time… I’ll have progressed past these damned relapses.”

“And even if they never quite go away, you’ll have me and the people at Gibraltar to help you through each and every one,” John said firmly. “You can count on that.”

“Thank you.” Sigma bent over and picked up his shoes from where he had dropped them in his lapse of judgement. “So… Did I try to convince you that I had to be put away again?” 

“Yes.”

“…Why does that keeps coming up in these episodes,” Sigma sighed. “I wish I could remember what I am thinking in those moments. It would simplify the process of getting rid of them!”

“You are the first to try and deprogram yourself from Talon’s brainwashing,” John said. “Until we know a little more, you and I will simply have to keep searching for a way out of that tangle.”

Sigma smiled. “Thank you. Your help has been invaluable – and thank you for making time for my episode on such short notice.”

John nodded. “Nobody chooses when their minds act up against them – I’m happy I could be here. Is tomorrow’s appointment still good?”

“Yes, please.” Sigma hovered out of his chair and levitated the fallen picture back onto John’s desk. “I think I’ll rest up for now, and seek out Zenyatta later for some guided meditation. It might help me remember some of what happened just now.” 

“Have a good day Siebren,” John said.

“You as well John,” Sigma replied. He floated himself towards the doorway of John’s office. It was a beautiful day on Gibraltar, and from the relaxed atmosphere he could tell that Overwatch’s latest mission had been a success.   
He paused and glanced back at John before he went through the door. The man was looking through some papers. It would be the easiest thing to slam his head down on the pyramid-shaped paperweight that sat at near the edge of the desk. Sigma took a deep breath, and imagined that he could smell the coppery scent of viscera in the air. It was a nostalgic scent. He could feel the music in his limbs – and he wanted to lose himself in the dance. 

It was a beautiful, beautiful day. Should he do it today?

All the heroes of Overwatch would converge on this little office. To try to talk him down from his rampage, or strap him into restraints until they could find a new mind-doctor to try and ‘repair’ him. Sigma would punish them for each moment of hesitation – for each little weakness that they showed. And there would be weakness – to them, he was a friend.   
The cream coloured walls and orange-tinted windows would be splattered with human paste, and Sigma would relish the sensation of bones and armour breaking in his grip. Like squishing a fat fly between his fingers. He would dance and dance to the music, a mere conduit for the powers of the universe, until his body gave out on him.

“Siebren, did you want to ask something?” 

Sigma blinked out of his fantasy. “Hm? Oh, no. I was just lost in thought. See you tomorrow!”

“See you tomorrow Siebren.” 

Sigma floated down the Hallway, waving a polite greeting at one of the newest secretaries that had come to work here several weeks ago. Sigma had already envisioned three different versions of her death, but no. Today was not going to be the day that he let himself dance.   
He floated into the garden, and levitated some rocks in a facsimile of a chair – leaning against the large rock at his back. There was no need to hurry. The weak shadow of Sigma that came out to try and get them locked up was not going to be able to come out for much longer, and he didn’t remember enough to convince John that he really needed to be confined. 

Sigma smiled and tossed his captured black holes back and forth between his hands. By the time Overwatch realised that stupid little Siebren had tried to warn them all along, he would already have added a couple more deaths to his tally. 

The music reached a crescendo, and Sigma hummed along. 

It was a beautiful day.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Siebren. I always found it really difficult to discern his alignment on the ole chart. Or rather, to find my personal headcanon. Is he an unrepentant killer with a detached scientific view of the world around him? Is he a kind-hearted but mentally-broken man who cannot be held accountable for his actions? 
> 
> In this fic, I tried to write him as both. 
> 
> Neither Sigma or Siebren have the complete picture. Siebren does not remember what happened at Talon, and only has vague impressions on what he has done during that time. Sigma does not remember his life as Siebren, and only has vague impressions of the mundane life he once had. 
> 
> On that note... anyone have an idea of which tags I could add?


End file.
